When Words Fall Short
On ‘Illinoise’ and the potential of dance to give music new meaning. Plus, stopping to smell the flowers.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details from Illinoise ahead (but if you’ve listened to Illinois, you already know them).
At its best, art is a canvas on which we project ourselves. The music that holds the most emotional power for me continues to be music I discovered in my youth—at such a formative time, I needed that canvas to make sense of myself and the world. There were many bands that did this for me as a teenager—Death Cab, Coldplay (their early albums)—but one artist who I wanted to but could never quite get close to was Sufjan Stevens. I adored his album Illinois—the comforting folk melodies felt like home. But whenever I listened more closely, I would discover hyper-specific lyrics that I couldn’t relate to. The concept album combines state history with the narrator’s own experience growing up as a closeted Christian in the Midwest. The subject matter covers the gamut from sympathizing with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy to UFO sightings to the World Columbian Exposition of 1893. So from high school onwards, I listened to him at a distance, humming to the soothing melodies rather than singing along to the lyrics.
Now, nearly two decades since the album’s release, it’s been adapted into a dance/musical-of-sorts—Illinoise—and seeing it this week has radically shifted the way I see Stevens’s music, and revealed the potential of dance to express feelings we can’t put into words; to transform music into the self-reflective canvas I often want it to be.
At first, I was skeptical to hear someone other than Stevens perform his music. I worried it would feel like imitation; like I was watching an American Idol audition. Instead, the orchestra takes the already-imaginative album to new realms, with Timo Andres’ bold expansions on the existing arrangements. The three vocalists dressed in fairy wings— Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova and Tasha Viets-VanLear—breathed new life into Stevens’s words. They didn’t seem to sing so much as “pour emotion into our ears,” as NYT critic Jesse Green writes. Even more, the lyrics take on whole new meanings when sung by a Black man, Elijah Lyons. Shara Nova, who was actually part of the album’s original recording, voice has a purity reminiscent of Lilith Fair days, that pierced Stevens lyrics through my soul, no matter the subject matter.
I could’ve listened to the orchestra perform the entire album and not been bored, but the addition of dance—a medium which arguably has the most musicality besides music itself—stretched the imaginative potential of Illinois further. No number demonstrated this better than a tap dancing duet between Byron Tittle and Rachel Lockhart to Jacksonville. Lockhart who, as Sara Holdren writes for Vulture, moves with both the “ease and specificity of ballet, and the nerve and rhythm of street dance,” to the beat of her Black tap-dancing ancestor Tittle’s rambunctious feet. “It’s tap as athletic, virtuosic heritage, both physical and spiritual” observes Holdren.
Each song told a different story through movement, opening up Stevens’s lyrics to new interpretations. For the track They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!, dancer Jeanette Delgado can’t escape the wrath of a group of zombies, no matter how fast she runs. At one point, it’s suggested that the zombies represent the country’s founding fathers, taking my brain to abortion and the ongoing fight for women’s rights.
After this dark number, I thought of the upcoming track, John Wayne Gacy Jr., which tells the tale of the serial killer known as the ‘Killer Clown,’ who raped, tortured and murdered at least 33 young men and boys just outside Chicago. Would they dare dance a literal interpretation of this gruesome tale? Yep they went there. But even here, the canvas is still presented; an invitation for us to see ourselves in the music, as the song’s final lyrics echoed in the theatre, “And in my best behavior/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floor boards/For the secrets I have hid.”
The red-and-white checkered picnic tablecloth used to drape over the dead boys’ bodies in the serial killer number, is used as Superman’s cape in the next—an uplifting, coming-of-age interpretation of The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts. At first, the sight of this hot white guy—the former New York City Ballet principal Robbie Fairchild—expressing his naïve young adult desire to conquer the world, I assume this song is not meant for me.
Midway through this number, the white man next to me—who is by himself and looks to be about my age (and also has a striking resemblance to Fairchild)—begins to cry, a sight so tender I’m reminded why we need to give men the space to cry more often. Apparently he’s not the only one, singer Shara Nova tells the NYT, “You can’t even look at the audiences because as far as we can see, people are crying. This is why we all come to theater, is just to have a space to feel feelings that we don’t see or can’t express in the world.” Look beyond the cis-white male package, and the number is really a tale of the seductive fiction of the individual hero, and by the song’s end, all the dancers on stage strip their shirts to reveal Superman costumes underneath.
After each of these distinct numbers, I assume each song is going to be presented as its own story. But eventually a larger narrative is revealed. After each track, the group of dancers huddle around the campfire—what is, as Melena Ryzik observes, like a “minimalist Wes Anderson scene”—and take turns telling stories from their journals (each story is a different dance number). Henry, played by Ricky Ubeda (a former So You Think You Can Dance winner), is hesitant to open up, but once he does, we launch into the show’s central plot: his move to Chicago, and then onward to NYC, with his best friend Carl (Ben Cook). But before that, we see him and his best friend’s relationship grow and expand into something they sense might be more than platonic but are too scared to find out.
The budding romance between Carl and Henry is cut short when Carl’s high school girlfriend Shelby (Gaby Diaz, another SYTYCD winner!), is diagnosed with cancer. Set to the tender folk track Casimir Pulaski Day, we watch Cook and Diaz express, without words, her journey to death. They repeat a looping dance sequence in which he tries to support her and she falls to the floor, and with each repetition of the sequence, she gets weaker. Anyone who has supported someone who is on their way out knows this dance—the repeated motions you go through even though you know the inevitable conclusion. Now, I’m crying, because as Holdren writes, “There’s something heartbreaking in witnessing dancers at the peak of their form—their bodies such gorgeous machines, so entirely powerful and controlled—channeling physical breakdown, weakness, illness, and death.”
Once Shelby dies, Carl continues the same dance sequence, almost like a golden retriever in the Pavlov test, just going through the same motions he’s trained himself to repeat. Prior to this moment, grief has felt like this big confusing mess to me, one I can never fully comprehend. But seeing Cook dancing without his partner, it suddenly makes so much sense. When our whole routine is built around being a support for someone—or, in dance, when you’re used to performing the same routine with the same person—and they suddenly disappear, it’s like you’ve lost a limb. The routine doesn’t make sense anymore yet you keep going through the motions because it’s all you know.
The death of a loved one isn’t the hard part, it’s what comes next. For the track The Seer’s Tower (another song I never connected to because it explores Christian themes), Carl is followed by a darkness he can’t shake, represented by dancers dressed in all-black, who keep luring him to jump to his death. Again, it’s a simple concept—bodies dressed in black throwing themselves off a ledge, encouraging Carl to do the same—but a powerful visual manifestation of battling your own demons. It’s songs like this one that represent the bridge I’ve always been too afraid to cross with Sufjan’s music. I can take the occasional dark song interspersed with his uplifting numbers, as this album’s discography provides, but listen to too many of them in a row and I find I go to a dark place that scares me. It’s why I pulled away from Stevens after Carrie & Lowell, an album about the death of his mom which was released just a few months before my own mom died.
Seeing this show, however, I’m reminded that for all the darkness in life, there is just as much light. Henry—the now-grieving protagonist who never got to see the love shared with his best friend become something more—proves that life goes on after people die. He finds love in a new partner Douglas (Ahmad Simmons) and an entire song is dedicated to celebrating their interracial, queer love. Seeing a Black and white man triumphantly in love was an inspiring visual I realized I never saw in dance when I was growing up. (It’s hard not to assume the couple is meant to represent Stevens and his late partner Evans Richardson, as the two pairs bear a resemblance). In fact, the entire cast was diverse, both in race and body shape, reinforcing the message that Stevens music is not just for one type of person.
I walked away from the show feeling the same way I do at the conclusion of this essay: that my medium of choice, writing, often falls short. There are parts of the human experience that can’t be expressed in words. And sometimes, the writing we make with the intention of helping others feel less alone can actually create boundaries. There is this idea I often hear from authors that “the more specific the writing, the more universal its meaning.” But when words are taken too literally, as I’ve done with Illinois and much of Stevens’s music, the universal message is never extrapolated.
As much as the uncontrollable reader’s interpretation can be a writer’s enemy, it can also be their savoir. Illinoise imagines the music of Illinois in ways I would’ve never dreamed of. Dance as an expressive medium pulls out the universal meanings in Stevens’s songs, in ways that words alone never could. Watching the show made me realize I did see myself in Illinois, I was just looking in the wrong place. I saw myself in the music, not the words, in the same way I saw myself in the movements my wet eyes traced on stage in this performance. As Holdren writes, “Illinoise makes clear what the music itself always has: Whatever Stevens’s personal background, whatever the spiritual vocabulary of his writing, his art reaches for a sense of worship and possibility that eschews labels, limits, and exclusions.”
Best,
Anna
Published 📝
Tripadvisor - 2 perfect days in Toronto
90% of the time my stories come from me ruthlessly pitching editors. But occasionally I’m lucky enough to have a story come to me. So when Tripadvisor reached out asking if I’d write their Toronto guide, I was thrilled. Despite being born-and-raised in Toronto, the assignment wasn’t as easy a task as I expected. Unlike most guides that consist of just the itinerary, for this one I also needed to include several detours per day, tour options, reviews from Tripadvisor users and logistical info like tips on getting around the city. (For the latter section, I really had to bite my tongue and not go off about our congestion issues 😆). Also was glad I got to recommend the East End, which most Toronto travel guides rarely do.
Reading 📖
🐰 How the bunny became cute.
💃🏻 Maybe dance can save the world.
👩💻 On hyperreal individualism and the dark heart of individualism.
👑 On the rise of celebrity conspiracy theories.
💕 A deep dive on relationships with big age gaps.
🎥 20 years later and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind remains hard to forget.
“Finding love can often feel like a hollow science fiction plot not far from Lacuna Inc. We are taught by online therapists, and smiling pop stars on Instagram and YouTube, to watch out for gaslighting, love-bombing and other red flags in potential partners. It’s become easier to pathologize ourselves and our histories in isolation than to allow ourselves to be seen”
- Madeleine Connors.
🧥 A mental style guide to transitioning to spring. (I’ve never felt more seen than referring to the parka as the coat equivalent of tinted windows 😆 ).
Watching 📺
Ever since my visa was rejected, I’ve been especially interested in the country I was supposed to be flying to today (I’ve been trying to be discreet about it but I’m clearly giving away here), so I’ve been watching the documentary To Kill a Tiger.
The Oscar-nominated doc follows farmer and father Ranjit in his uphill battle to get justice for his 13-year-old daughter after she’s brutally gang-raped. Every 20 minutes a rape is reported in India and yet the conviction rates are less than 30 percent, making this film an important piece of advocacy. That being said, it’s hard to watch, so I can only handle it in 30-minute instalments. I didn’t realize until watching that it’s a Canadian documentary, distributed by my hometown’s own National Film Board of Canada. I heard the film has caused an uproar in India because it violates the country’s rule of not identifying minors (which makes me wonder if it’s part of the reason Canadian tourists are having a hard time getting visas right now).
Listening 🎧
Even if you’re not a fan of Sufjan Stevens, you’ve probably heard his music and not realized it. He wrote two of the most popular tracks in Call Me By Your Name, and Chicago was the soundtrack for a key scene in Little Miss Sunshine. Whether you’re unfamiliar or well-versed, I suggest listening to Illinois. Seeing Illinoise this week inspired me to give the whole album a re-listen and I have even more respect for it now.
Snacking 🍌
Illinoise made me miss dancing after several months off. I’ve been to Angela Trimbur’s balletcore and dance aerobics classes but not tried Thirteen. As the name suggests, the class is meant to make you feel like you’re thirteen again, dancing with your friends at a sleepover (or alone in your bedroom). It felt like the perfect place to give my new Barbie pink Calia leggings a test run.
It’s also Easter! My mom’s favorite holiday marks the beginning of what I consider to be her season. She was a feminine, sensitive woman who looked best in florals and pastel colors (in true water sign fashion). So I made an effort to pause and notice all the flowers blooming in my neighborhood this weekend, thinking of her at the sight of each magnolia or cherry blossom tree in bloom (it really is New York’s best season!). I was surprised last night with a call from my friends back home to let me know they had decorated my mom’s commemorative tree in her honor because they remembered it was her fave holiday too. 🥹
I hope you celebrate the arrival of Spring in your own way this weekend, whether that means buying flowers for your loved ones (or even better, yourself), or simply stopping to *smell the roses.* 💐
I had Illinoise tickets pulled up in a tab before I'd even finished your reflections on it — sounds absolutely wonderful. Loved hearing about your friends decorating your mom's tree, too.